The Not Very Complicated Reason Why No Men Were Using Pinterest

It can true: men often have a hard time getting in touch with their sensitive side. They can be a bit clueless when it comes to creativity and design, even though some of the great designers in the world are men. And, it could be argued that a lot of men are lazy: spending time thinking about crafts when there's a game on can be, well, a mismatch of interests and actions.

But none of those stereotypes had anything to do with the lack of interest displayed in Pinterest, the social 'visual discovery tool,' as it describes itself.

No, actually, the reason that men have not flocked to Pinterest as they have so many other creative, socially interactive sites is that the algorithm driving the technology that runs it discourages them from doing so. Now, even that is not entirely accurate. It's not so much that men are discouraged as that the software reinforces the demographic tendencies of the site and the way it builds usage.

The implication of all this has less to do with Pinterest than with the role of inadvertent biases in everything we do and the way they can be exacerbated by technology, again, inadvertently.

Which may have something to do with why there are so few women in tech relative to their numbers in the population and why other inclinations by which we think we mean nothing bad end up driving behavior that we did not intend but affects us socially, economically and personally. JL

Carmel DeAmicis reports in GigaOm:

Since it’s a user-generated content site it’s demographics tend to build on themselves. The more women — or motorcycle fans, or cooks, or interior designers — are on the site, the more pin will be created that appeal to them.
If you ever wondered why Pinterest took off with women and not men, we have our answer. Friday the company announced it had changed its search filtering options so that men could see results catered to their gender.
In the past, when searching for workouts or clothes their feed would fill with pins targeted to women. Since Pinterest’s early users were women, the application spread virally through that demographic. Naturally the most popular pins and pinners are, as a result, for women or by women.
That shut out men who might also find the technology useful but didn’t like the results they were served. Although some people who identify as men might appreciate a more feminine selection, not all would. Take a look at Pinterest’s screenshot on the difference in genders:

The difference in gender searching on Pinterest. Left: Men ; Right: Women

Pinterest

The new gender focus will appear as a toggle, allowing women and men to search for items of the opposite gender as well. That could be helpful for anyone with more androgynous taste, or it could serve well for gift shopping purposes.
The attempt to make Pinterest appealing to men comes from the company’s new head of brand, David Rubin, who formerly ran marketing for the ultra dude product Axe body spray. He was brought on in part to achieve that goal, and he started by commissioning Pinterest ad storylines to appeal to men and filling men’s home feeds with male products. Frankly I’m surprised it took the company this long to create gender specific search results — it has been around for over seven years, after all.With the product announcement Pinterest also revealed new statistics, saying that its number of male signups have grown 73 percent year over year. It’s impressive numbers for the U.S. As we’ve covered, in some other countries, Pinterest has actually had a far easier time recruiting men to the application.
Since it’s a user-generated content site it’s demographics tend to build on themselves. The more women — or motorcycle fans, or cooks, or interior designers — are on the site, the more pin will be created that appeal to them.
To kickstart other groups Pinterest has to woo them with product shifts, and it’s doing just that.